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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26030698">Six Summers Down</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkhette/pseuds/sharkhette'>sharkhette</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Late Night Conversations, Nightmares, Post-Canon, Team as Family</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 07:28:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,385</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26030698</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkhette/pseuds/sharkhette</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nile watched the first rays of the sun come filtering through the trees, softly dappling the path in yellow and grey. "Tell me something good?" she asked. "Everything's been such a shitshow since I met you—since even before that. And now, with Booker gone, and Andy…" She swallowed and turned to Nicky, who watched her with big, soft eyes. "Just tell me something I can look forward to in all this."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Booker | Sebastien le Livre &amp; Nile Freeman, Nile Freeman &amp; Nicky | Nicolò di Genova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>234</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Six Summers Down</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title from Orville Peck's Dead of Night.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Nile jolted awake, sticky from the summer humidity and the cold sweat that had broken out during her usual nightmare. She'd been drowning again, further under the sea than anyone knew how to reach, her lungs filling and collapsing again and again and again.</p><p>It was easier to call it a nightmare than think about what it really meant. Mental gymnastics kept the dream in the fictional category for a few seconds after she woke up, before her new reality sank back in.</p><p>It was just before dawn; in another hour, the sky would start to lighten from charcoal to periwinkle-grey. It was already swelteringly hot, the Louisiana air pressing in close all around. When Andy had said they were heading to America, getting the hell out of Europe until Copley was sure their tracks were well and truly obliterated, Nile had been excited. She hadn't been back in the States since she'd shipped out, and obviously Andy wouldn't let her anywhere near Illinois, but still. It was home.</p><p>That was until Andy had specified that they were heading to their southern safehouse, the one nestled all the way down in the swamps. Nile was used to the dry, suffocating heat of the desert, not this stifling wet kind that seemed intent to drown her on dry land. It clung to her like a second skin, leaving her sticky and claustrophobic. And the people were no better than the air. The way they stared at her and Joe, not even trying to hide their suspicions, as if Nile hadn’t gone and died for her damn country—for all of them—</p><p>So: she didn't love the South. But in the pre-dawn, before the sun came up for real, before the serious heat of the day set in and the roads were still empty, and all that lush, swampy green seemed peaceful instead of threatening: that was tolerable.</p><p>They were holed up in a real house this time, rather than a cave or a bombed-out church or whatever else passed for a home in Andy's book, each with their own room, even if the house was off the grid. Nile was grateful for the privacy. At least when she had a door to close, she didn't risk disturbing the others every time she woke up, terrified and shaking, with Quynh's desperation still rattling in her lungs. There had been a weird comfort to it when they had all been crammed into a single room, the others within arm's reach when she woke up choking. But after the Merrick disaster Andy had been sleeping more, adjusting to her newly mortal body and all its boring, mundane demands, and Joe and Nicky had retreated to nurse their invisible wounds behind closed doors, and Booker…</p><p>She had his number. If the others knew, they were pretending not to. But it didn't feel right, texting him to ask for company in the middle of the night, even if they shared the same dreams. They'd only known each other for a few days, and all she'd do was remind him of what he couldn't have for another hundred years. That kind of selfishness didn't sit right with her, and it felt worse because she was pretty sure he'd talk to her for as long as she needed.</p><p>Sitting up, she got dressed in the dark, pulling her sneakers on before tiptoeing to her door. She just needed to get out of her own head for a minute, and she could do that with or without company. As she crept into the hallway, Nicky emerged from his room, looking at her questioningly before following her to the kitchen.</p><p>"Can't sleep?" he asked softly.</p><p>Even with doors and walls between them, she still managed to wake them up. She paused with one hand on the back door. "I was gonna go for a run."</p><p>He nodded. "Would you like me to join you?"</p><p>She almost refused on principle, because no one should have to go for a run before five a.m. unless it was their own idea, but she didn't really want to be alone. Not when she could still taste salt water every time she swallowed. That, and twenty-six years of living as a young black woman who could die just as easily as anyone else was hard to shake. She'd never gone for a run in the dark in a strange town by herself before. Especially not a town like this, where the atmosphere made her skin crawl.</p><p>Anyway, if she was really going to live for millennia, she might as well figure out some healthy coping mechanisms. Booker's approach of drinking his miseries away all by himself hadn't worked, so she was determined to do the opposite. Talk to people. Open up and connect rather than letting her fears and insecurities fester.</p><p>"Yeah, okay," she said, and together they slipped out the door and into the dark of early morning.</p><p>"If you go northeast, there's a park," Nicky offered. "It should be empty, this early."</p><p>"Sure. Parks are nice."</p><p>She took off in the direction he gestured, sneakers pounding the pavement as she went from zero to a hundred, right out of the gate. It was stupid to go that hard without so much as a single stretch, but warming up meant standing still, and she wanted to move. She wanted to run until her lungs burned for a reason that had nothing to do with the ocean, and she had worked her body to its limits, so she couldn't think about anything other than her own exhaustion.</p><p>Nicky stayed at her elbow, letting her set the pace without complaint, silently shepherding her towards wherever that park was. Neither of them spoke. Neither of them could, not with how fast Nile was pushing them, and soon her thoughts quieted, too, replaced by the thundering of her blood and their short, harsh breaths as their bodies fought to keep up with them.</p><p>By the time they hit the park, she almost felt like herself again. Coming to a halt, she blew out a heavy exhalation, bending double as she pressed her hands to her knees. Beside her, Nicky stopped too, waiting for her to head into the winding paths that curled and stretched around the trees and grassy openings. It wasn't like the parks she knew from Chicago; less of an open space and more of a trail designed for joggers and dog-walkers, the great, dark trees offering the illusion of privacy and a return to something primitive.</p><p>"You are still having the dreams?" Nicky asked eventually as they walked.</p><p>Nile grimaced. "I didn't mean to wake you up. You deserve to get through a night without me interrupting you." She glanced at him sideways. "I figured you and Joe would appreciate some alone-time."</p><p>"It's no trouble if you wake us. We want to be here for you."</p><p>The night was retreating, turning everything navy-blue-grey, and their footsteps were silent against the packed dirt path. Nile was sticky with sweat, her shirt clinging to her. She should have brought a water bottle. Or a protein bar. She should have just stayed in bed and tried to get some sleep. Lying in bed alone with her thoughts wouldn't be so bad compared to the weird intimacy of baring her soul to her new—teammate? Brother? Friend? None of those words seemed big enough to encapsulate all that Nicky and the others were to her. There was something in Nicky's tone, a gentleness, that completely undid her. It was way too early, she was still half-asleep, and she was not ready to be seen like that, with all her vulnerabilities on display.</p><p>Nile couldn't look at him as she asked, "Are you ever upset about something, and you're trying to front so nobody worries about you, and you think you're getting away with it until somebody asks you if you're okay? There's this certain tone they use, and you <i>know</i> they know you're not, but they ask anyway, and that's what cracks you?" She kept her gaze trained on the treetops, as they slowly sharpened into focus against the pale dawn. Sniffing, she brushed her eyes dry with the back of one hand. "My mom used to get me with it all the time."</p><p>Nicky put his arm over her shoulders and she leaned into him for a second, grateful for the contact, before pulling away.</p><p>"You have much to be upset about," he said softly. "Take your time with it."</p><p>"Are the dreams gonna last forever?" Booker still dreamed about Quynh. Nile couldn't imagine having the same nightmare—memory, god, <i>experience</i>—for that long.</p><p>"Nothing lasts forever. Not iron, not oceans. Not even death," Nicky added, like it was an afterthought.</p><p>Nile put one hand over her mouth as the enormity of eternity flooded through her. Iron would erode and countries would collapse and continents would shift, and she'd be there to see all of it. Nicky had been alive before the United States existed. Andy couldn't remember her own family's names.</p><p>"God," she choked out. "Oh my god. How do you do it? How do you just—"</p><p>"You can't think about it all at once."</p><p>"I don't think I can think about it at all. I never thought I'd live to see a hundred, and now you're telling me I'll pass a thousand." She ran her hands over her face, swiping the sweat from her forehead. "I was ready to die in the Marines. Hell, I <i>did</i> die. I didn't want to, and it scared the hell out of me, but I was prepared for it, you know? I signed up knowing what had happened to my dad, and knowing the chances of what would happen to me. And now it's like it never happened at all. No scar, nothing."</p><p>She still stared at herself in the mirror some nights, caught between marvel and panic at the sight of all that smooth skin. No scar on her throat, no defensive marks on her arms, no bullet holes in her torso. She didn't even know all the places she'd been shot, taking Merrick down. It had happened so fast, dying so many times, constantly flooded with adrenaline—the bullets had gone in and out and healed up without a mark before she'd even noticed them.</p><p>"They trained us," she said quietly, wrapping her arms around herself, "on what to do if we got captured. But it's worse if you can't die, isn't it?" Drowning again and again and again. Getting pieces carved out of you to be studied in petri dishes under microscopes, needles and scalpels and bone saws. Iron or stainless steel. "I always thought dying was the worst thing that could happen to me, but maybe it's worse if you have no choice but survival."</p><p>"We will always come for each other. What happened with Quynh, when we lost her—we will never let that happen again."</p><p>"But getting caught <i>does</i> happen."</p><p>Nicky dipped his head in agreement. "It does. We seek out the worst of humanity in order to make the world a better place, even when it means putting ourselves in harm's way. It is always worse when they learn we cannot die."</p><p>"Some people are bastards."</p><p>"Some are. But we keep each other safe."</p><p>Nile uncrossed her arms and stepped towards him as he opened his without a word, letting her drop her head against his chest. "I'm glad you guys found me," she said into his shirt. It was so old it was worn soft and thin, and she breathed him in shakily, swallowing the last of her tears. He smelled like clean sweat and Joe's deodorant. She leaned into him for a minute longer, secure in his arms, until he pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and she took a deep breath and straightened up. If she had cried into his shirt a little, the material was sweat-stained enough not to show it.</p><p>"Okay." She watched the first rays of the sun come filtering through the trees, softly dappling the path in yellow and grey. "Tell me something good?" she asked. "Everything's been such a shitshow since I met you—since even before that. And now, with Booker gone, and Andy…" She swallowed and turned to Nicky, who watched her with big, soft eyes. "Just tell me something I can look forward to in all this."</p><p>"There's so much," he said immediately. "In between our missions, we can do anything. We will take you through Europe—not just London. Anyone can go to London." He waved one hand dismissively. "There are so many towns that tourists have never heard of. Villas that have barely changed in five hundred years, restaurants that have used the same recipes for generations. Everywhere you have ever wanted to go, anything you have ever wanted to try—you can do all of it, now."</p><p>"I always wanted to see the ocean," Nile offered, hesitantly.</p><p>Nicky smiled. "Which one?"</p><p>With a helpless laugh, Nile shrugged. "Fuck. Any of them. And…and the Sistine Chapel?"</p><p>"Yes. You should definitely see that. Joe will take you to every museum in the world, if you let him. And you should see the cathedrals in Italy. I will take you to those."</p><p>"And what does Andy take people to see?"</p><p>"Andy will show you everything, if you follow her for long enough." He turned to face the sunrise, the dawn climbing higher and lightening the world from blue to pale gold. "Do you want to stay here a while, or are you ready to go back?"</p><p>"We should go before it gets busy out here."</p><p>"Good."</p><p>They turned back the way they had come, shoulders jostling as they walked. It was pretty when there were no people around, though the streets were already beginning to hum with early-morning traffic. The streetlights flicked off one by one as the heat slowly thickened and got wetter.</p><p>"How long are we staying here?" Nile asked as they returned to the safehouse.</p><p>"A week or two, maybe. Andy is waiting for Copley's word on security. After this?" He shrugged. "Andy will choose somewhere else to go. We need to recuperate, after everything. We will have to train together, now that we have you." He glanced at her. "You do not like it here?"</p><p>"It's a bit…" Hot. Oppressive. Smothering.</p><p>He hummed. "It is."</p><p>"I don't like how the people around here look at me." She shook her head. "Bad vibes, that's all."</p><p>But no one knew who they were. There was no one hunting them or trying to tear them apart or use them as lab rats, and she hadn't been woken up in the middle of the night by gunfire or bombs dropping. A crawling feeling along the back of her neck like she was being watched by someone with ill-intent wasn't the same as being held down under open fire.</p><p>"But I guess it could be worse," she allowed reluctantly.</p><p>"We lay low." He pulled the door open for her. "You don't have to leave the house if you don't want. Andy and I can go to town to get any supplies we need."</p><p>She forced a smile. "Nah, it's fine. What's anybody gonna do to me? I can't die."</p><p>He smiled back at her, nudging his shoulder into hers. "You cannot," he agreed as they stepped into the kitchen, now glowing with buttery yellow sunlight. "But you can still hurt."</p><p>"Well, shit, that's nothing new."</p><p>Over the next hour, as the others woke up, Nicky made breakfast in the yard over an honest-to-god campfire while Joe brewed coffee and argued with Andy about whether she could start drinking at six a.m. Nile tipped her face into the sun as the day's first cicadas started screaming in the trees. This wasn't her first time coming to grips with the world tilting under her. The first time she'd lost one of her friends—the first time what being a Marine really meant hit her, viscerally, right in the guts—she'd freaked out then, too. She breathed, she compartmentalized, and then she dealt with it. And she could deal with immortality, too. She had a team. She had a family.</p><p>As Nicky handed her a plate heaped with pancakes, Nile tapped out a quick text to Booker, leaving her phone in plain view of the other's curious glances. Andy had only recently let her have a phone at all, making her swear on everything she held holy that she wouldn't give them away to her mom or her brother, no matter how much it hurt to let them think she was dead. Nile wasn't about to betray Andy's trust, but she couldn't let Booker go without any contact, either. They were supposed to be there for each other. Otherwise, what was the point?</p><p>"How you doing?" she texted, before setting her phone aside to pick up her fork and dig into the pile of pancakes. They were fat and gold and perfectly fluffy; Nicky obviously had a lot of practice cooking without electricity. Was that a skill she was going to have to pick up, too?</p><p>Booker's reply came a few minutes later. "Still alive." He had attached a picture of himself—slightly blurry and out of focus, with dark circles under his eyes, but definitely alive. He was saluting the camera with a bottle of vodka, a tired smile sitting crookedly on his mouth.</p><p>Joe glanced over to see it, then snorted and shook his head. "Still alive. What else would he be?"</p><p>"Does this count as breaking the hundred-year rule?" Nile asked. She wouldn't text him if they really didn't want her to, but she'd argue her case for it, first. They were supposed to save each other.</p><p>Andy shrugged. Joe had confiscated her alcohol, so she was throwing back black coffee with a resentful air. "He didn't betray <i>you</i>. Go for it, kid."</p><p>"It's good for him to have someone," Joe agreed quietly, his eyes down. "It just can't be us, right now."</p><p>Nile looked at Nicky. The hundred-year exile had been his idea, she knew. Catholics could dish out penance like nobody's business, even if the whole team insisted that a hundred years was small change for what Booker had done.</p><p>But Nicky just smiled at her, a little sadly. "You have a kind heart, Nile. Like the boss says: the choice is yours."</p><p>Nile bit back a relieved smile of her own and shovelled more pancakes into her mouth. "It'll get better," she texted Booker.</p><p>Later that afternoon, Nile's bad night caught up to her and she fell asleep on the couch with her head on Nicky's thigh and her feet in Joe's lap. She plunged to the bottom of the ocean and everything went black, colder than anything she'd ever felt. She broke her fingers repeatedly against the walls of her iron tomb, her nails tearing out as her bones snapped and reknit themselves and her lungs flooded with stinging salt water.</p><p>A scream choked its way out of her mouth, turning to a gasp as she woke, bolting upright.</p><p>No darkness, no ocean water, no iron casket. Just sticky humidity and solid body heat. She came back to herself in Joe's arms as he murmured quiet reassurances in her ear. Behind her, Nicky rubbed circles between her shoulder blades. From the battered old armchair on the other side of the room, Andy met her gaze. She looked heartsick, like she knew what Nile was dreaming of.</p><p>"You'll be okay, kid," she said tiredly, her elbows braced on her knees as she out a bottle of booze.</p><p>Nile only hesitated a second before refusing the offer with a shake of her head. "I know," she said, and she wasn't even lying. It might not happen in a day or a week or even a year, but she'd adjust, and in the meantime, she was going to be a fucking kickass addition to the team. Nightmares were a small price to pay for doing tangible good and saving the world.</p><p>Her phone blinked with a new message. <i>It'll get better,</i> she had told Booker. "Yeah," Booker replied. "Eventually, it will."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This was originally written as the first part of a longer, more violent horror fic set in the Deep South. It turned into something different along the way, but I kept the original setting. So, if you're wondering about the weird, sticky atmosphere, that's the backstory.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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